


From Sexual to Textual: How Fanfiction Renews Ideas on Language, Gender and Sexuality

by halloa_what_is_this



Category: No Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-30 01:43:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8513863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halloa_what_is_this/pseuds/halloa_what_is_this
Summary: This is an essay that describes the ways fanfiction can have a positive effect on the renewal of language about gender and sexual identities. As a genre, fanfiction works hugely outside the heteronormative mainstream literature that often describes sexuality and gender minorities as a group outside the silently accepted norm, ie deviants or even criminals, or merely as the representation of sexualities while forgetting that heterosexuality is itself a sexuality that has been made a norm. Being produced, consumed and circulated most by individuals identifying as female and describing a wide variety of sexualities - focusing especially on male/male relationships - fanfiction can offer an escapist safe space for individuals from gender and sexuality minorities as well as a way to express their sexuality in real life.





	

**Introduction**

 

When discussing how language renews gender and sexuality, medical or academic studies should not be the only source material used for even though they are valuable as source texts and as statistical facts, they do not bring out similar examples from everyday life as do texts written, read and talked about by gender and sexual minorities themselves in their own language and in their own environment. Because the texts in popular culture designed for the LGBT+ groups are often carefully constructed, almost censored publishable texts, they may often lack aspects that are vital to the reader who comes from a minority group. Reasons for this can be, for example, that the author themselves is not part of a minority group, or that they may have to write a cleaner version for the market than they would like themselves. Because of this, texts that reveal the everyday life that celebrates the sexuality of minorities can be found from unpublished authors who produce and share texts with only their own community’s well-being in mind.

One example of such gender and sexual minority representatives, authors who write about themselves or their own community, are fanfiction writers. Minkel, arguing on the positive sides of fanfiction in her article, states:

Fan fiction gives women and other marginalised groups the chance to subvert the mainstream perspective, to fracture a story and recast it in their own way. It’s not for the benefit of middle-aged men with a vast audience and little understanding of the form. (Minkel 2014)

This summarises two important aspects of fanfiction: it defines the group to whom popular culture allows space and freedom to be creative as well as condemns the group that restricts this freedom. Minkel continues to ask whether the latter group’s negative comments about young girls’ sexuality is in any way harmful and answers to her question herself: “Absolutely.” Power, money and the possibility to speak openly are something fanfiction writers may not have. By spreading a negative image about those who produce and read these texts, those in power make certain that their opinion will also remain that of the general public.

Patriarchal and heterosexual hegemony’s exercise of power and manner of condemning the way fanfiction writers and readers speak about themselves and their community – actions which the hegemony authorises with the general opinion – are some of the targets these marginalised groups aim to change in renewing language so that their experiences and identities could also be represented through it. Because these marginalised groups aim to undermine the worldview the mainstream offers, it can be assumed that the language used in this kind of writing also attempts to undermine the rules set by the mainstream. “[L]anguage produces the categories through which we organize our sexual desires, identities and practices” (Cameron & Kulick 2006, 19), and hence it is self-evident that each sexual identity, desire and practice wants to be able to describe themselves with their own language. Because marginalised groups may not be able to tell about themselves through heteronormative language, they attempt to form their own language, for example, through fanfiction.

Heterosexual hegemony not only excludes what it considers to be its binary opposite, that is homosexuality, but other sexualities that lie between as well as outside these two, and so it can be assumed that the language of sexualities outside the mainstream is not similar to it for already their experiences and how they are spoken about takes place in completely different ways, among other things through fanfiction, a forum outside the mainstream. However, fanfiction is not just a forum for sexual minorities, but a strongly female based genre and as such a part of feminine writing. By comparing fanfiction to authors such as Hélène Cixous and Virginia Woolf and their way of portraying gender and sexuality outside the mainstream norm, fanfiction can be interpreted to be a part of a bigger whole that attempts to renew the language both inside and outside the mainstream. Fanfiction could very well be a noteworthy option to mainstream literature and how it portrays genders and sexualities, an option that does its own part in improving the mental health of marginalised gender and sexual minorities.

According to one of the largest fanfiction archives, Archive of Our Own (AO3), fanfiction’s task is to give physical space for the fans’ own adaptations that are based on existing works. These kind of archives are “fan-created, fan-run, non-profit, non-commercial archive for transformative fanworks, like fanfiction” (archiveofourown.org) and in the works published there the fans’ own experiences prevail. Justifying one’s own gender and sexuality is easier through fanfiction rather than solely through physical experiences because through fanfiction individuals are able to find a language through which to discuss the subject as well as peer support of the community and a possibility to hear about similar experiences. In fact, the term used about fanfiction, _transformative works_ , is founded on the idea that texts coming from the mainstream transform, merge and continue the experiences, thoughts and language of the marginalised groups and which on their own part renew all of these and bring out these groups’ need to collect and find themselves from archives ( _archival desire_ in Sorainen 2013, 32).

Because fanfiction reflects specifically the experiences of marginalised groups, it discusses gender and sexuality outside the heteronormative lifestyle. These kind of minority texts examine the supposed perpetual unity of gender and sexuality and doing gender consciously through language in ways different to that of heteronormative texts as well as discuss sexualities outside the sexual binary through language which reflects this group’s own experiences. For example, based on their name or the tags added by the author approximately 4300 of the 1 714 000 texts in AO3 discuss asexuality (archiveofourown.org), but because this number does not show whether there are other explicit or implicit mentions of sexualities _inside_ these texts, it can be assumed that the amount of fanfics discussing asexuality is much larger. Thus, fanfiction is an excellent aid when examining how gender and sexuality are renewed through language because not only does it bring out possible experiences in sexual and gender minorities’ lives, but also helps in collecting and archiving texts and stories about them.

 

**The presence of gender and sexuality in fanfiction**

 

Minkel gives several reasons for why fanfiction is written, one of which is the renewal of gender roles “without the constrictions of traditional gender roles in heterosexual relationships.” (Minkel, 2014) Sorainen also states that in queer archives gender does matter (2013, 35). The reason for this is not only who is represented in these archives, but also who produces the texts in them. According to Sorainen, the need for archiving among sexual minorities comes from the fact that sexual experiences have been considered to be a male privilege (ibid.). However, the importance of relationships between men even in women’s text should not be belittled. According to a self-reported survey, over 90.3% of the fanfiction writers and readers on AO3 identify as women (centrumlumina.tumblr.com/post/62816996032), and of the over 1 714 000 texts 860 443 have been tagged as M/M (archiveofourown.org), that is, a text that includes male/male relationships. Whether the relationship is sexual, romantic or platonic varies from text to text, but compared to a similar tag F/F – female/female relationships – the amount is much smaller, 109 111 texts (ibid.). Hence, women produce more fanfiction than men and of the texts over half discuss male characters.

The glaring difference between the amount of texts with male and female relationships can theoretically reflect several things. One could be the need to produce texts outside the mainstream that discuss relationships other than those between female characters that are more accepted in heteronormative society. Another could be an escapist desire to write about one’s own reality from a completely opposite point of view. Thus, for example lesbian women may write about gay men. The writers may also want to produce texts that tell about men from other than male point of view. This would in part explain why the majority of writers and readers of these texts are women. Because almost 900 000 texts have been marked explicitly so that the reader knows them to involve specifically male/male relationships (archiveofourown.org), it can be assumed that gender is an essential part of fanfiction.

Because the contents of the texts cannot be known without reading each, their sexual content is also mostly speculation. However, of the almost 900 000 M/M marked texts, 209 927 have also been marked with the warning _explicit_ and 164 365 with the warning _mature_ (archiveofourown.org), both of which are used as warnings for violence, swearing or other triggers as well as of sexual content. So, it can be assumed that at least some of these approximately 173 000 texts specifically involve sexual relationships between men. However, this does not mean that the remaining texts marked M/M would not deal with sexuality in other ways, for example by discussing possibilities other than sexual desire which sexuality has been misleadingly compressed to mean. Because ‘sexuality’ in general use refers especially to gays and heterosexuals, that is, to individuals who feel “a stable erotic preference for people of the same/the other sex” (Cameron  & Kulick 2006, 4), the term excludes sexualities such as asexuality or demisexuality. For example, with the tag _asexuality_ , 4442 texts can be found from AO3, of which 575 have been marked with the warning _explicit_ , and with the word _trans_ can be found 6469 texts, of which 1224 have been marked with the same warning (archiveofourown.org). So, the archive covers a wide range of genders and sexualities, but also helps in finding them through the work search and tags, thus giving the marginalised groups an opportunity to find themselves easily. So, the importance of gender and sexuality for the writers and readers has been taken into consideration already when the archive has been created and continues while it is being built.   

 

**How fanfiction reflects reality**

 

So, fanfiction can tell about physical sex, but it also concentrates on describing different genders and sexualities. The reasons for the popularity of relationships between men are not clear, but it can be assumed that they arise from their typical taboo position in the heteronormative society. Instead of writing about the accepted relationships between women, fanfiction writers want to tell about male relationships that are not part of the mainstream but are deemed necessary. Minkel proposes this to be part of the reason for the critique fanfiction receives. Another is the fact that fanfiction is written and authorised by women (Minkel 2014). Female sexuality and especially texts written about it are still considered to be a taboo and difficult to approach as texts that deserve acknowledgement and publicity just as other texts that discuss sexuality. So it can be assumed that texts describing relationships between men written from the female perspective raise even stronger critique. It is this critique especially that fanfiction community attempts to address. Gender and sexuality are conscious aids in writing fanfiction through which society’s critique towards gender and sexual minorities as well as feminine writing – that is, towards all its marginalised groups – is addressed.

Indeed, heteronormative gender roles can be inspected from a very different point of view through fanfiction than through mainstream literature. According to Minkel, women – that is, the majority of writers and readers – “want to explore love and sex without the constrictions of traditional gender roles in heterosexual relationships” (Minkel 2014), in which case they write, for example, about relationships outside the heteromatrix and thus also about non-heteronormative gender roles. Ussher finds similar features in real life lesbian relationships:

If we look outside of a heterosexual matrix, where roles within relationships are not taken for granted and divided on gendered terms, these oppressive patterns of relating are less common, suggesting that it is not ‘marriage’ or child-rearing per se that is a risk factor for women’s depression, but particular aspects of relationships that are more common in a hetero-patriarchal context. For researchers have reported that in comparison to heterosexual relationships, lesbian relationships are experienced as more satisfying and communication is more likely to include open exploration of feelings, empathic attunement to non-verbals, negotiation and the absence of contempt. (2010, 21-2)

Thus, fanfiction and the relationships it brings out can be paralleled with real-life relationships which question the traditional heteronormative gender roles and so can have a positive effect on an individual’s mental health. Finding oneself from texts and hearing voices similar to one’s own creates on its own part a healthy image of one’s own gender and sexuality which may not have fit the heteronormative standards. When, for example, asexuality is interpreted “as a signifier of doing gender ‘unhappily’” (Rossi 2011, 19), according to which “it does not seem ‘natural’ to feel desire” (ibid.) and thus brings out gender unnaturally, in fanfiction even the experiences of this kind of marginalised group can be expressed as positive ones which in turn can reflect on doing it physically in everyday life.

Fanfiction also responds to popular culture’s way of bringing out queer elements or queer _subtext_ by bringing them out as explicitly queer _texts_ (Minkel 2014). When queer subtext is represented strongly but texts explicitly referring to queer characters – that is queer _texts_ – are rare, fanfiction is one way to repair this defect. The vast number of sexual and gender minorities in fanfiction community reflects this need for queer texts. In the eyes of the heteronormative society, a sexual body that wants and is able to feel sexual pleasure must also always be a gendered body to make the body more understandable (Juvonen 2006, 74), but texts portraying genders unlike these, that is non-heteronormative genders, are rare among mainstream literature. Hence, the solution the fanfiction community has is to write these texts themselves and in this way renew language by telling in their own language about their experiences as non-heteronormative individuals. Thus, sexual body and mind are built through the textual while sexuality develops with the help of new communities and texts produced and read in them.

So, it can be assumed that several representatives of sexual and gender minorities read and write fanfiction because the texts produced by the fan community create a safe and “supportive space to explore sexuality” (Minkel 2014). As with the sexual relationships created in chat rooms the computer between the individuals protects the physical body from critical looks and provides barriers to sexual violence (Juvonen 2006, 88), fanfiction archives collected online provide a safe way to inspect one’s own sexual and gender identity. The writers and readers of fanfiction look for a secure way to express their own sexuality in a community which the heteronorm condemns as “strange” and “wrong”. When the sexual becomes textual – or perhaps textual becomes sexual – sex and sexuality are easier and safer to approach and learn to understand. Fanfiction is an option for those to whom heteronormative textual sexuality has previously been the sole possibility, often produced from a male point of view.

 

**Female perspective in renewing language**

 

As stated, one explanation for fanfiction as an especially female-favoured genre is that women want to fill the holes left behind by the already published literature and use more of their time exploring and developing the characters. This way they bring out the deficiencies of language and the desire to renew and reform it by creating fiction which is based on a ready text or genre and showing how it can still be grown and developed. As also stated, the minority groups outside the dichotomically defined heteronormative gender and sexuality model can find an escapist refuge in fanfiction with the help of which it is easier to approach and fulfil reality. One’s own gender and sexual identity is easier to build in a community where different genders and sexualities are accepted as equals and that offers essential tools in building this kind of identity, starting with textual eroticism which can help build identity more deeply and meaningfully than by consuming mainstream erotica where heteronormative gender roles and pressures are constantly present. In addition, fanfiction gives these marginalised groups a chance to their own textual archiving as well as a possibility to dismantle the controlling discourse in archives (Sorainen 2013, 32).

Cameron and Kulick support this idea of language as an important building block for identity and its relationship with sexual identity as well as other identities such as gender, class, ethnicity or religion (2006, 11) of which the first is here strongly connected to building a sexual identity. Because the task language has is to discuss, that is to tell to others what kind of person one is (ibid.), discussion is also an important part of the formation of one’s sexual and gender identity. Salonen also notes that the discussion can be more interesting than the result because with it sexuality is made culturally significant (2005, 88-9), which in turn can strengthen the marginalised groups’ autonomy and decrease the amount of epistemic power heteronorm has over them. Because in fanfiction each story and experience is as itself real, the characters’ gender or sexuality and what is experienced through them are not limited to only one, but form a complicated web which is discussed and to which one’s own sexuality is mirrored. Even one written experience reflecting one’s own self can awaken a feeling that one’s gender and sexual identity are not something that the ruling archives have phantasmatically built to even stranger and twisted characters (Sorainen 2006, 32), but is justified even without the approval of the heteronorm.

An important part of the identity of those who write, read and share fanfiction is indeed the discussion about it as well as how fanfiction in general is received. However, those who defend fanfiction may face difficulties in obtaining positive response for their opinion due to the heterosexual hegemony that holds power over mainstream literature. Perhaps describing female, non-heterosexual and queer desires is still seen as such a taboo in literature as well as in everyday life that the discussion of sexual desires is not based on their sources, that is the individuals or internal forces that form them, but the focus is instead “ _how_ is desire elicited, organized, and interpreted as a social activity” (Gagnon  & Parker 1995, 13; cursives mine). When studying fanfiction, it is important to note that those who produce it interpret it specifically as the community’s shared product and that it aids in the formation of positive self-image of those who cannot find themselves from the mainstream. Brenna Twohy bases her opinion of fanfiction on this when saying that the sexiest part is that it is a part of a bigger story (Brenna Twohy 2014), a part of rewritten mainstream texts which are made specifically for the community who produce and consume these texts.

Because this community for the most part consists of women or individuals identifying as genderqueer (centrumlumina.tumblr.com/post/62816996032) who attempt to produce new kinds of literary texts outside the mainstream, it can be assumed that the fanfiction community also attempts to renew ideas of gender and sexuality inside the community. With language, fanfiction produces and justifies the kind of genders and sexualities that cannot have this justification in the mainstream and as far as they are concerned the connections between gender and sexuality should still be discussed. When fanfiction brings out sexualities outside the heteronorm, it gives them an opportunity also to discuss desires that are not bound to gender or that are bound to genders that are not portrayed in the mainstream. Because the known masculinities and femininities are created specifically through the heteronorm (Cameron & Kulick 2006, 143), their place in the mainstream literature is also strong. Fanfiction as non-heteronormative feminine writing in turn creates images of non-heteronormative genders and sexualities and gives them an opportunity to renew themselves outside the gender roles created by the heteronorm. So, it cannot be denied that gender and sexuality are not closely connected in fanfiction, but it can be stated that they do not produce similar kinds of negative images of non-heteronormative genders and sexualities as mainstream literature does. 

**Doing gender and sexuality with fanfiction**

 

Even if the idea of gender and sexuality as a unity is accepted as a whole, it is fatal to think either of them are unchangeable, stable. A concept that has been created culturally through language and social communication cannot be considered something everything is known about, but instead should be thought of as a concept that requires analysis (Speer & Stokoe 2011, 4). Doing gender consciously is also aware of this idea of gender as a concept that the members of society attempt to understand and in consequence bring out their understanding of it through actions (ibid., 9). Thus, gender is brought out through language and actions in a world that is constantly changing and where the way to bring out concepts also change. It is futile to assume that gender would not change as do the ideas concerning it. Doing gender happens both explicitly and implicitly by using words as well as through the physical process of doing gender, part of which oral and textual performance also are. If we assume that gender can change, must sexuality as a part of it also be able to change.

When discussing the verbal and textual doing of gender and sexuality, it must be remembered that producing reality through language is not unambiguous (Salonen 2005, 70), but a construction that takes place in a continuing social communication which at the same time builds social reality. Language does not copy or reflect reality as such, but reality is produced to look a certain way through language (ibid.) in which case the prevailing opinions and points of view affect strongly what can be shown in the mainstream and the ways they can be shown. How gender and sexuality are expressed or left out affects how they are seen, how they are defined and how they are talked about or left out, that is how they are produced through discourse (ibid.) While gender is left out somewhere, it may be talked about elsewhere, for example through fanfiction. However, the forum used affects how the expressed point of view is received.

Heterosexual hegemony forces the linguistic performance of non-heteronormative genders and sexualities into marginalised genres and thus makes producing them as well as reading them only the marginalised groups’ duty. The explicit references to sexuality in mainstream language and literature do not usually refer to heterosexuality but to minority identities (Cameron & Kulick 2006, 51) which enforces the silent production of the heteronorm as a status quo and thus ensures that telling about non-heteronormative sexualities remains in texts produced by marginalised groups. As stated before, sexuality has become a shorthand term for either heterosexual or homosexual, “that is, it denotes a stable erotic preference for people of the same/the other sex, and the social identities which are based on having such a preference,” such as lesbians or gays (Cameron & Kulick 2006, 4). Similarly, bringing out gender leans heavily on the heteronormative idea of male and female sexes as well as the idea of gender’s constant presence which is only enforced by redoing gender physically and verbally merely through euphemisms (Speer & Stokoe 2011, 81). When the influence of the heterosexual matrix remains unchanging in the background of gender and sexuality, in the eyes of the mainstream the marginalised genders and sexualities produce both through verbal and material doing a “wrong” kind of body image that is outside the heteronorm.

Thus, the difficulty non-heteronormative genders and sexualities have is twofold. For example, avoiding gendered pronouns but also bringing them up explicitly emphasise the presence of a non-heteronormative identity because the normative gender category is _not_ present in the conversation. In this case, the listeners interpret that the speaker is not attempting to refer to a person but trying to bring out their sexuality through gendered means (Speer  & Stokoe 2011, 77) and thus a solid connection between gender and sexuality is created once again. Thus, everything outside the heteronorm becomes sexual and gendered while everything purely heteronormative remains a natural norm and the language which is built on it maintains the dichotomic idea of male and female sexes as well as hetero and homosexuality.

However, heteronorm constantly produces genders and sexualities outside itself, but by verbally accepting only hetero and homosexuality as well as male and female sexes, it leaves several genders and sexualities in a grey area. This way the duty of performing these genders and sexualities verbally is left on the marginalised groups and are acknowledged only by them. When doing gender and sexuality outside the heteronorm is limited to the margins of the mainstream, these genders and sexualities cannot receive similar kind of general and silent acceptance as the heteronormative genders and sexualities can. Thus, heteronorm makes itself accepted and at the same time denies the existence of other genders and sexualities on the basis of its epistemic third person point of view in a manner it deems best.

In their research, Speer and Stokoe continue this idea of the power of the norm by expressing the idea of how positive self-assessments, that is compliments given to oneself – for example, a knowledge that the subject is good at doing something – has to be founded on information received from a third person (Speer & Stokoe 2011). Because the idea of acting properly according to a norm is that self-criticism is healthy but self-praise should be avoided, it can be assumed that other kind of behaviour outside the norm must also be authorised by a third party. Viewed thus, heteronorm’s justification about its right to determine the rights of non-heteronormative genders and sexualities is that the ‘I’ representing sexual and gender minorities can be examined more objectively through its ‘Other’, that is through the heteronorm.

This is also how fanfiction, those who produce it and its readers working as linguistic supporters of the non-heteronormative genders and sexualities are approached. As stated before, when discussing the non-heteronormative only its difference to and position outside the heteronorm is inevitably brought up. This is why when sexualities are being written about in the mainstream, facts such as homosexual desires or how an individual expresses their sexuality in practice is not discussed. Instead language is brought into focus, that is how different speakers talk about and describe their non-heteronormative sexual identity (Cameron & Kulick 2006, 78). Thus, the topic of the discussion once again becomes the authorisation of sexuality, not its normalisation and discussion about its details, desires and sexual behaviour. This is a defect fanfiction attempts to bring into focus by renewing the gender and sexuality of already existing characters. Heteronormative genders and sexualities produced previously through a heteronormative language are rewritten in a non-heteronormative language which tells about both the characters’ identities as well as how these identities are expressed in practice.

 

**Silent non-heterosexuality in fanfiction**

 

According to Cameron and Kulick, the link between language and sexuality is attempted to be justified only when studying literature about gays and lesbians (2006, 78). This kind of language is thus defined as different from the beginning and its use and style is founded on its users’ non-heteronormative sexuality. Like the language of non-heteronormative writing, so is feminine writing defined as the opposite of masculine writing, for its purpose is emphasised to be a language which must take back women’s space and make it a new kind of space in comparison to the space masculine writing has (see for example Hélène Cixous’ _The Laugh of the Medusa_ ). The danger of bringing out these opposites is, for example, that when written same-sex love is written as parallel to heterosexual love, it is still made subordinate to it (Salonen 2005, 139–140). Normative heterosexuality is rarely presented as an identity while other sexualities are shown specifically as such (Cameron & Kulick 2006, 11), and when they are discussed, they are also spoken of in this way; as identities, often as choices, and concentrating only on their status as an identity and not as an individual’s way of doing sexuality in their everyday life.

Silence also brings out these individuals’ status as genders and sexualities outside the heteronorm and thus supports its silent approval. Because in discussion about these kinds of ways of writing and these kinds of texts the focus is drawn towards the identity outside the heteronorm, non-heteronormative genders and sexualities cannot become silently approved without conscious renewal of language. Now the attention is brought to their position as genders and sexualities outside the heteronorm which in turn maintains heterosexuality’s status as the silent norm (Salonen 2005, 18). Due to the large amount of fanfiction that exists, isolated comparisons about how much and in what ways gender and sexuality’s silent role is brought out in the texts – that is their self-evident existence – are difficult to conduct. However, because fanfiction attempts to function outside and against the mainstream, it can be assumed that it speaks of these genders and sexualities as self-evident and not merely as struggles. Producing and reading fanfiction are already signs of how heteronormative silence is renewed from its margins.

However, the danger is that the silent doing forms an already visible opposite to heteronormativity, that of homonormativity which can fall to same traps as its hetero-opposite. It should be remembered that doing sexual norm is creating something of an illusion effect (Salonen 2005, 254) which is supported by continuous repetition. Any kind of sexual behaviour that is considered to be normal always leaves out identities that are defined as abnormal and marginalises individuals who identify to it. Thus, it is not only about making heterosexual deeds normal, but about wider conversation on signifiers of humanity (ibid., 255). This discussion happens through language and definitions created with it. Through their active production, one’s own self is also placed physically inside them. As stated, fanfiction also wants to describe physical sex, and then sexual identity is not the focus point of the story. Pondering and bringing out sexual identities is of course an important part of these texts, but taking them for granted is even more important. In order for the reader to gain satisfaction from the text and to be able to place themselves physically in the given definition, life outside the heteronorm cannot merely be a struggle. Homonormativity should not form rules similar to the heteronorm which marginalises different individuals outside itself, but it should continuously produce possible forums for new identities and support them by renewing language that talks about them, all the while supporting their silent approval and not how they are brought out glaringly.

This kind of new language, speaking it out loud, its silences and terminology form the foundation of the idea of archiving, finding a common language. As in Speer and Stokoe’s research (2011, 301), approval rises from finding a common language history and recognising concepts in it. When readers find themselves in the language of the fanfiction archives, they also find a way to express their gender and sexuality in a positive way through language without the heteronormative way of using language only to describe the identities of marginalised genders and sexualities while forgetting to describe the everyday lives of individuals representing these identities.

 

**Conclusion**

Language builds social reality and constantly creates new meanings and categories for sexuality. Thus, finding a common language is essential. Because in the discussion about genders and sexualities outside the heteronorm these identities are always justified and mirrored with the heteronorm, even texts about these outside identities are marginalised. “Divergent” is brought out only by comparing it to the “normative”, or it is marginalised as uncivilised (Kulick & Cameron 2006, 51), and so it has no place in the mainstream culture. Feminine writing is based especially on the language used, its intonations, pauses, breaks and everything that separates it from the mainstream (masculine) writing. Similarly literature about sexual minorities is analysed through language, for example through how a speaker uses language while telling about their sexual identity outside the heteronorm. Thus, sexuality and sexual identity are erroneously made each other’s synonyms. Instead, fanfiction archive Archive of Our Own’s statistics prove that even if sexual identity is part of the text, the narrative is not limited to it. Fanfiction also brings out the physicality of gender and sexuality, and this way the difference of language is not based on a style different from the mainstream, but on the topic of the narrative. Bringing this kind of physical, non-heteronormative, everyday sexuality into linguistic presentation may well lead to previously marginalised groups’ positive gender and sexual freedom without it being dependant on the literary style.

Fanfiction as a literary genre gives marginalised groups the possibility to produce and read texts about themselves that are not mirrored to the heteronorm and that do not function under it. When asked whether fanfiction is meaningful, one can quote Minkel by saying: “Absolutely.” In its own way, fanfiction can be paralleled with feminine writing and its history for it is outside the mainstream, a literary style it criticises, a style where characters the mainstream has forgotten or marginalised are discussed, and which through language renews assumptions of gender and sexuality that have been forgotten from society’s linguistic interaction or that are defined as part of a bigger whole outside the heteronorm. With fanfiction, doing gender and sexuality linguistically supports doing them physically. Language helps the physical to gain the justification it has yearned for, and fanfiction as part of non-heteronormative literature gives marginalised groups a language to use while claiming this justification.

 

 

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**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this essay for a gender studies course in the summer 2015 (that's why the numbers are not up-to-date anymore) and finally gathered enough courage to publish it. Having been written in Finnish I first had to translate it into English, and let me tell you, it may sound so nice translating your own stuff since you know what you have meant by every metaphor and insinuation, but no. Damn hard work!


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